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Contributors

George YeoMinister of Foreign Affairs, Singapore. Guest Columnist of BeyondSG. He is on Facebook. Readers are welcome to join his Facebook network at http://www.facebook.com/georgeyeopage

Harold FockEntrepreneur (Chief Editor of BeyondSG).
Deputy CEO/CFO of a listed technology company in Asia and CEO of Foundation Capital Pte Ltd, a hedge fund based in Singapore.

November 05, 2009

Happy Deepavali - blog article by Ravi Velloor

'Happy Deepavali.'
At 06:30 a.m. as I waited in the lobby of the Cinnamon Grand Hotel in Colombo
recently, that was the call from the man striding by.
At first it didn't quite register. Then I awoke from my reverie:
Happy Deepavali, to you, Minister!
Perhaps it was fitting that the first person to wish me that day was George
Yeo, Singapore's foreign minister. For Mr Yeo is an uncommon personality.
Among all the global personalities I have encountered in a three decades-long
career, I have met no one with such an interest in other cultures. I have
watched him on an early winter morning, finishing up his breakfast, changing
into chinos and a leather jacket to visit the historic Mughal built Sunday
Mosque in Delhi's old quarter, only his bodyguards in tow. I have watched
him in the dusty outback of India's Bihar state, standing amidst the ruins
of the ancient university of Nalanda, fittingly in the company of some
of the world's best known intellectual luminaries. He was there to participate
in a Singapore-backed dream to revive that ancient Buddhist seat of learning
for a new generation of Asians. Last month in Hua Hin, Thailand, the East
Asia Summit endorsed that effort.
I am not a big fan of blogsites, but one I unfailingly check every few
weeks is Mr Yeo's blog, if nothing else to catch up on some speech of his
I may have missed.
On this Deepavali day, we would travel in a quiet land where there was
little celebration despite the area being home to large numbers of Hindus.
We would move by helicopter to Mannar in the northwest of Sri Lanka, then
to Jaffna in the north and on to Trincomallee in the northeast. We would
be briefed by military commanders and civilian administrators. We would
visit irrigation projects and the Prima factory in Trincomallee, that iconic
Singapore investment in Sri Lanka whose products have been consumed by
every citizen of that nation. We would visit the historic Jaffna library
and the famous Nallur Kandasamy temple in that town.
"Did you see the look on his face when he broke that coconut as an
offering at the temple?" a Tamil Singaporean who was part of Mr Yeo's
delegation told me later. "The reverence was real."
At the end of the day, having dined with a local industrialist and before
embarking for Singapore, Mr Yeo sat down for a media wrapup. There, he
unerringly pronounced correctly the names of every town we had visited
and every person he met. I was taken aback.
I must have been to Sri Lanka more than a dozen times, sometimes for more
than two weeks at a time, but I will not lay claim to have the same facility.
Yet, this was only Mr Yeo's second visit to the island and the first was
many years ago, when he holidayed there with his wife.
Does all that make him less Chinese, or less interested in the culture
of his own forefathers?
Not at all.
In Trincommalee I watched a retired Sri Lankan admiral, now governor of
the Eastern Province, brief Mr Yeo. The admiral mentioned an area called
China Bay. Immediately, Mr Yeo's ears pricked up. He asked how the area
got that name, then went on to answer his own question by discussing various
possibilities, including a port call by the Chinese seafarer Zheng He.
Foreign ministers come in all sizes of intellect. Around the world there
must be a few who can match Mr Yeo's intellect. But what probably sets
him apart is his genuine interest in alien cultures and this surely must
be of use in what probably is the world's most globalised island state.
Mr Yeo gives the impression of a man overawed by the splendour of the universe
even as he marks his own place in it.
That thought struck me after seeing the transcript of a door-stop interview
he gave Colombo journalists after bilateral talks with his Sri Lankan counterpart,
Rohitha Bogollogama.
Dwelling on the talented Sri Lankan diaspora and how it could be harnessed
for the country's post-war development, he had this to say: 'All my four
children were delivered by Sri Lankan doctors.'
As a lifelong journalist my only regret about Mr Yeo is that he didn't
choose to join my profession. Certainly, he had the opportunity.
My former editor in chief, Mr Cheong Yip Seng, once told me he had talent-spotted
a young George Yeo just as he had entered government service as a bureaucrat.
They were in Indonesia together, accompanying some heavyweight on an official
trip.
Sadly, Mr Yeo declined Mr Cheong's offer of employment, choosing to stay
on in government.
Too bad. The Straits Times newsroom could have used his skills to teach
how to convey the most complex and beautiful thoughts in the simplest language.
And on that subject here is my favourite George Yeo line.
Turning up at an inter-religious meeting a couple of years ago in Singapore,
Mr Yeo had this to say about the Parsis. This is the tiny community of
Zoroastrians who migrated to India from Persia a thousand years ago and
have been successful in business while being great philanthropists.
"The Parsis," said Mr Yeo at that meeting, "have always
sweetened the milk that is their host."